The Real One
THe haunt PROJECT IS PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH WRITERS SA, AND IS SUPPORTED BY ARTS SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
fiction by Patrick Allington
After the revolution, Gracie—the Former Princess Gracious—refused to go into exile. She chose, instead, to live on the hill station in the stone and concrete Oblong her grandfather had built to ward off real and imaginary enemies.
The people still loved her, despite the excess, the brutality, the corruption, the scorched earth shenanigans of her father, King Butch. So although the rebel leader—now the president—pleaded with her to go to Italy or Brazil or Antarctica or somewhere, anywhere, he knew he would lose the people if he forced her hand.
‘This country is my home,’ she said. ‘I mean to stay. I mean to be a citizen.’
✷
The hill station was a long way from the capital city, a long way from anywhere much. Only a dribble of well-wishers visited her, mostly young people. A few per month. Each time, the soldiers guarding the bottom of the hill searched them for weapons or messages of counterinsurgency, then held them until Bernard drove down with the relevant forms and a blue ballpoint pen, to either take them up or send them away.
Gracie didn’t welcome these visitors, exactly, but she saw them as proof that she wasn’t a prisoner. The she still existed. She sat with them in a paved area outside the Oblong, looking east. Usually, she drank tea with them. If someone looked scrawny, she offered them a bread roll stuffed with whatever leftovers Bess the cook had on hand.
If it was too wet or hot—or wet and hot—and only if he deemed them suitable, Bernard brought visitors to the meeting room on the second floor of the Oblong. He had to take them through the ground floor library to get to the staircase, but he never lingered. From the first days, and for the decades that followed, the library was reserved for those who lived on the hill station, to eat, to talk, to watch television, to play poker, occasionally even to read.
Generally, the visitors came to tell Gracie how much they loved and admired her. They called her Your Royal Graciousness. They bowed and scraped. Gracie saw that their devotion was real, still, after everything. Rarely did they appear to pine for the old days but they missed the idea of the royal family. They missed her walking about waving at them – so much more than she did. They wanted to genuflect. They needed it. Gracie found the whole notion odious. But she prodded the façades of her devotees with all the tenderness she could muster. And she encouraged them to look up and out.
‘Be a dentist if that’s what you want to be,’ she told one young woman, ‘or at least try’.
‘Travel the world,’ she told another: ‘if you have the money, there is nothing to stop you.’
‘Do not worry about me,’ she told one young man who looked into her eyes to the point of creepiness, leaving her to ponder if there was a difference between reverence and lust. In this respect but in no other, she still felt as if she was a princess. The people still owned her, when they chose.
‘They’ll stop coming soon enough,’ she told Bernard one day, after a group of students had brought her a bouquet of wildflowers that sent him into fits of sneezing. She understood Bernard’s impatience. He had to vet these people on the run. He had to do the paperwork— although it seemed to her that he loved filling out forms. He was their age or younger but here he was playing the administrator, the gatekeeper, the bemused parent, reluctantly facilitating their fantasies. Bernard’s approach to this job, Gracie already knew, was simple and effective. He followed the rules. And the rules said that Gracie was not a prisoner, that she had committed no crime, that she could leave the hill station whenever she chose so long as she also left the country. The rules said that she was allowed visitors, so long as they weren’t dangerous and so long as they weren’t relatives or connections of King Butch.
In the first months, Bernard only refused people admittance to the top of the hill twice—a soldier or two hovering discreetly in case things turned ugly. One time, a hairy young man in a ‘Peace, Man’ T-shirt pleaded to wash Gracie’s feet. He brought his own bucket of sudsy brown water. He was as high as an eagle. After Bernard said no to him, he fell asleep under a tree and woke with a raging headache. A soldier radioed Bernard and gave the boy a lime to suck on. Bernard dropped the boy at the bus station at Bassel markets and bought him a ticket to the capital.
Another time, an older man, wearing a shiny suit, rubbed his hands together as he made a case that Gracie should sign a carload of Princess Gracious portraits, rip-offs from the official painting King Butch had commissioned for her eighteenth birthday. Bernard let a couple of soldiers give the man a gentle shove—he would never have laid hands on another person himself—as they bundled him back into his car.
‘Any one of them could be the original,’ the man said. ‘That’s the point.’
✷
One day, nearly two years after the revolution, a masked man knocked on the outer door of the Oblong. Bernard was sitting in the library, reading a two-month-old copy of Newsweek, waiting for Nolan, the gardener, to go with him into Bassel. Bernard needed to continue haggling with a builder about dates to finish the renovations to the outbuildings. And they needed food for the week: Bess was away in the city, visiting her new grandson. Nolan needed to see the one doctor in town: his kidneys were misfiring, and the shrapnel embedded permanently in his shoulder was keeping him awake at night. Bernard presumed Nolan also wanted, or needed, to visit Madame Spoon’s, the brothel that sublet the first floor of Bar White, which sold local wheat beer even though the area grew no wheat. The overseas tourists were starting to come.
Bernard looked through the peephole of the Oblong’s outer door and saw the masked man dressed in all black. He pushed open the heavy stone door.
‘Hello? Yes?’
‘There’s no need for alarm,’ the man said.
‘I’m not alarmed.’
‘We’re here to see Her Royal Highness, Princess Gracious.’ He made a fist and lifted his arm above his head. Five more masked figures lifted themselves from prostrate positions. Playing at manoeuvres, they criss-crossed the ground and positioned themselves in a wide semi-circle before the door.
‘There’s a boom gate. A road. Processes. Rules. Regulations. Forms to fill out. Vetting. Identity cards to check.’
‘We demand to see Her Royal Highness.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘We have come to liberate Her Royal Highness.’
‘I venture to say that the Former Princess considers herself already liberated.’
‘Don’t call her that. She’s not a former anything.’
Nolan emerged from the shed, brandishing an axe.
‘No no no,’ Bernard said mildly. ‘I’m happy to talk to these nice people. Let’s keep things friendly. No need for that.’
Reluctantly, Nolan lay the axe on the ground before him. He stood over it, rocking from foot to foot. It was the fittest Bernard could ever remember him looking. No wonder he always looks so grumpy, Bernard thought: he was pining for the civil war.
Gracie emerged from the Oblong, blinking in the harsh light, feeling her pockets for her sunglasses, which sat on the dresser in her rooms on the fourth floor.
‘I was just going to pull some weeds,’ she said, ‘but I see we have visitors. Nolan, for the gods’ sake, will you relax. Stop drinking so much coffee.’
Each of the masked people dropped to one knee.
‘It is you,’ they chanted in unison.
‘Well,’ Gracie said, ‘aren’t you well-synchronised. But I really would like to get on with the gardening.’
‘Your Royal Highness,’ their leader said. ‘I am humble in your presence. I am nothing. I am a speck of dust.’
‘I am a speck of dust,’ the others repeated.
‘Well, you’re the biggest speck of dust I’ve ever seen. Please, all of you, stand up. I’ll get a sore neck trying to look at you down there.’
‘We are not worthy.’
‘Oh, goodness me: it is my will that you stand up.’
The leader stood first, then the others. The leader counted them in, and they started singing. ‘Oh, King Butch, father of us all, father of the nation, father of all that is goood and ri –’
‘Please,’ Gracie said. ‘A song is not necessary. Especially that song.’
‘Oh, the great delta, like a woman’s loins. Oh, the peaceful pigs, smartest and juiciest on earth. Oh –’
Gracie clapped her hands. ‘Stop. … I thank you for your enthusiasm, I applaud it, but hearing this song pains me. I implore you to stop it. I thank you for understanding.’
‘Our music brings you joyous memories of better times, which makes you sad,’ the leader said.
‘Well, something like that.’
‘We are here to liberate you. You will never be sad again.’
‘I do not mind being sad sometimes. I have earned it.’
‘We will restore your love of song. That is our pledge.’
‘I see. And who are you exactly.’
‘We are representatives of the MRMIQGM.’
‘That’s quite a mouthful.’
‘You’ve heard of us, of course.’
‘I must confess …why don’t you tell me about yourselves in your own words.’
‘If I may,’ Bernard said, eager to move the conversation along, ‘they are the Movement to Restore the Monarchy and Install Queen Gracious as Monarch, or words to that effect.’
‘Got it in one, rebel scum,’ the masked man said.
'Your general knowledge is … impressive, in its own way,’ Gracie murmured to Bernard.
‘We are the real thing,’ the masked man said.
‘I can see that. I really can,’ Gracie said. ‘The only problem is, I do not want to be queen.’
‘They have corrupted you. Brainwashed. Tortured.’
‘They really haven’t. I have seen the monarchy up close, with my own eyes.’
‘Exactly. It is your duty to be queen. The people need you. They want you.’
‘Are you sure. There are only a few of you.’
‘You are with the people in spirit. You are all around us, every single one of us. You are the air, pressing against us, sitting in our lungs. You are the wind. We feel you. Sometimes we feel you so hard we see you.’
‘Well, isn’t that enough to be going along with?’
‘It is a lot. We thank you. But it is not enough.’
‘My brothers are older. Why not make one of them king?’
‘Prince Diamond is … a disappointment.’
‘Yes, I think we can all agree on that.’
‘Don’t get me wrong: we love him. He is our hero. But we must be practical. The rest of the world will never accept him after what they say he has done. And he has left but you have stayed. And Prince Rolphe is … is …’
‘Yes, he is,’ Gracie said. ‘You are unarmed, I take it?’
‘Of course. Unlike our opponents, we come to you with nothing but the power of our devotion and beliefs. We are pacifists, like you, like your father.’
‘Believe me, I mean no disrespect to your deeply held views. But my father would be horrified to hear you call him a pacifist.’
‘Therein lies his genius. His munificence.’
‘I see.’
‘You are talking to your own people now. There is no need to pretend. There is no need for politeness to protect yourself against the anger of the rebel scum.’.
‘They’re quite nice, really. On their better days.’
‘Please, come with us now. We will get you away from this terrible prison. Your rightful place is at the Royal Palace. We will simply take you there and walk in. The people will see you and they will protect you. You will sit upon the throne.’
‘I think they burned the throne. Good thing too.’
‘We are on foot but—’
‘You walked from Bassel? I’m … impressed.’
‘We are on foot, but we will carry you. Your feet will never touch the ground again. That is our pledge.’
‘All right, I’ll come. But I just need to grab my coat. It’s cooler out than I expected.’
‘Time is of the essence, Your Royal Highness.’
‘It’s cashmere: a gift from the King of Thailand. I’ll just be a couple of moments. My coat. A change of clothes. My toiletries. I’ll need my men-in-waiting to help me. I’m sure you understand. I would not deign to carry my own belongings. Come along boys,’ she said, motioning to Bernard and Nolan.
When all three of them were inside the Oblong, Nolan secured the outer door, muttering about the danger posed to his tool-shed. Bernard found the two-way radio and asked the soldiers to come up.
‘Please tell them not to hurt them,’ Gracie said.
‘I told them already.’
‘They’re harmless.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Nolan said.
While Nolan watched through the peephole, Gracie and Bernard ran up the four flights of stone stairs as quickly as they could.
‘Did I ever tell you I once ran up the Leaning Power of Pisa?’ Gracie asked.
‘Many times,’ Bernard said, panting. He wasn’t as fast or fit as Gracie.
They arrived on the roof in time to watch the soldiers arrive, guns waggling.
‘No shooting!’ Gracie called, though she doubted they could hear them.
‘Don’t worry,’ Bernard said. ‘They’ve got no live ammo. It’s all for show.’
The members of MRMIQGM appeared to welcome their arrest. They dropped to their knees calmly, voluntarily. Each of them removed their own mask, revealing a mix of men and women, young and surprisingly old.
‘It was worth a try,’ the leader said, as a soldier handcuffed him and pulled him towards the open truck.
‘That’s rougher than necessary handling,’ Gracie called.
‘They still can’t hear you,’ Bernard said.
‘Gently, for the gods’ sake,’ she hollered.
The leader looked up and saw Gracie gazing down at him. He placed his hands on his chest. The wind carried his words to her.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said.
Patrick Allington’s novels are Rise & Shine (Scribe) and Figurehead (Black Inc.).
